Attendees at this year’s Summer Institute track “Improving Library Service: Cooperation, Collaboration, Communication” are in for a real treat. While we were both in Chicago, I met with Pat Wagner (Pattern Research) who will be presenting a major portion of the content at the Summer Institute (August 1st - 5th).

Pat is sharp, experienced, and has the ability to relate the material right to the attendee. She shared some theories with me, and I just can’t wait for Summer Institute when the whole group will get to experience the entire program. Later in the conference, I had the opportunity to see one of the programs that Pat was presenting: “Generation Gap: Challengs and Benefits of a Mixed Generation Workforce.”

UPDATES:
Catching up on blog entries, we have some terrific material and thoughts being shared. Thanks to everyone for contributing and reading.

I’ve been able to meet with Brenda Cooper and Louise Marley in person, and Dave Kusek by phone in the past couple of weeks. They are all excited to attend. Brenda and Louise will be able to join us for the entire Think Tank. They will stay in the discussions, and Brenda will help with facilitating if needed.

Brenda’s first novel, with dean of Science Fiction Larry Niven is out this month. Title: Building Harlequin’s Moon. I am reading it now and it’s a great summer read. Earthborn people escape an over-technological earth but get stranded on the way to a new world. They have to build their own world, and in so doing must use the same technology they set out to escape, plus they have to birth a new civilization of moon-born. Thus they must come face-to-face with their own prejudices and fears.

With the recent comments about vacations, it seems appropriate to mention the travel web site www.spacefuture.com. It was brought to my attention in a recent Ebsco futures' Alert in a little blurb from CANADIAN BUSINESS (4/25/2005) entitled "Beware of zero-gravity pickpockets." Many may already know abut the web site. As a scifi fan I enjoyed my clicking-trip which required no dramamine.

One of the great things about ALA is the opportunity to step back and see the larger picture of what is happening in libraries. It’s great to learn about other libraries, and even better to find out that they all share common challenges. I attended a couple different programs on Saturday that addressed the future of resource sharing. Add to that the content of the “Mining the Long Tail” presentation, the OCLC Environmental Scan, and pretty much anything written about the behavior of next generation library users and now I’m all riled up! Some major themes keep coming up:

It’s about Content, not Containers. Library users, and potential library users, are becoming more interested in the information they need, and not so much concerned about the format or the source.

One the challenges of a huge conference like ALA is that there is so much going on, so much information being presented, that one (me) needs some time to process what was heard/seen/experienced. It’s now 14 ½ hours after my day started here and I’m trying to process what happened. How do I sum up a 3-hour presentation in this short space? The answer? It’s not going to be short.

OCLC sponsored a symposium today: “Mining the Long Tail: Libraries, Amazoogle and Infinite Availability.” It began with Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine. In October 2004 he wrote an article titled “The Long Tail.” I’m having a hard time explaining the long tail without a picture. But think of it this way: When considering movies, there is a core selection that makes up the bulk of what is viewed. And if the movies were ranked and put in order of popularity (purchase/rental) in a graph, the graph would start high with the big box-office superstars, continue to slope downward through the popular mainstays, and then end with a long tail of those movies that are ranked low in popularity. Not just low, some may rarely see the light of day.

I have finally wound up the school year and may have time to think and read...I hope! I received the books from ILA - Thanks, and have looked at the reading list, etc. I will be leaving for Costa Rica this Friday and plan to take along some reading materials for the think tank.

The LiLI Unlimited Catalog allows the user to search for materials held by all the libraries in Idaho with just one search. Well, that is the potential. A user can’t see a library’s holdings in the database unless they’ve been added by the library. That might have happened in the past when batchloading and retrospective conversion projects were done with WLN. These days, it is more likely the result of a library that catalogs new materials using OCLC’s tools. That’s because the LiLI Unlimited Catalog operates in the FirstSearch interface — an OCLC product. And the LiLI Unlimited Catalog is really a subset of the entire OCLC WorldCat database.

This week I have had the opportunity to sit in on the training for new LiLI Unlimited participants. Staff from these libraries are learning how to use OCLC’s CatExpress, FirstSearch, and Interlibrary Loan tools. As I hand out the passwords to access FirstSearch, I am struck by how much they look like something the cat types as she walks across my keyboard.

FirstSearch passwords are machine-generated. Is it secure? You bet. Easy to remember? Not at all.

Since this password can be shared with your library’s customers, you might want something more user friendly. So how can a library change their password to something that is both secure and sane? You have 2 options:

Graduation is over and now I’m gathering books, articles and reading postings in the Vision’s blog.
I’m jumping in!

I’ve read part of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t, by Jim Collins. Commonalities of organizations or companies that have moved beyond “good” to “great” are identified by Collins. One shared element is that almost all their CEO’s or leaders who lead the group from “good” to “great” came from within. Drawing on this point, libraries should look to a cooperative management approach to create great leadership. In school libraries, this would involve the faculty, staff, students, administrators, counselors and the community. The physical presence of our school libraries will be morphed and so must the staff and the system by which new leaders are developed.